


a hardened heart

by fiveyaaas



Series: open your heart [13]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Could Be Canon, F/M, Jealousy, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug, Season/Series 02, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 11:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29526033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: “harden one’s heart: to stop having kind or friendly feelings for someone or caring about something”
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Series: open your heart [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2138898
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	a hardened heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eldritching](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eldritching/gifts).



Five knew, on some level, that, if she had her memories, she’d have reason to be upset. That being said, he also knew that she had no idea what he’d done, that she just hated him based on his… general demeanor. Seeing her look at him like he was nothing to her, though, like she could take him or leave him, was grating on his nerves. 

Well, really, it was causing him to feel a panic he’d never felt before. She didn’t look at him the way she once had, and it had been so easy to take the friendship they had for granted, considering the fact that, when he’d gone to her apartment, she hadn’t treated him any differently than she always had. 

Then again, he’d just tried to kill her. 

‘Do you remember that?’ he wanted to ask. ‘Is that why you hate me now?’

He almost would have preferred it if she had all of her memories and despised him because of what he’d done. Because she just immediately decided that he wasn’t better than some person she’d known a month, and it  _ hurt. _

It was selfish, really, that he was concerned about this. Really, it was selfish for him to be concerned about  _ anything _ other than the impending apocalypse, but he couldn’t help but think about Vanya constantly. At one point in their lives, she’d been his best friend. Had he ever even told her how much she meant to him? Surely, she would have known, but, then again, the first thing he’d done after not seeing her for a week was try to kill her. 

Not that she remembered that. 

But it wasn’t like he could deny that she had reason to be upset about that. 

A lot of the others had managed to move on pretty well, which Five was thankful for, some of them having been separated from each other for years. He wouldn’t want his family to be forced into solitude because of him, especially when he knew how awful solitude was, but Vanya had only been gone a month. Or, so it seemed. She only  _ remembered  _ the past month, so it would make sense for her to have only been without them that long, likely having been hurt by the time travel while she was unconscious, though she hadn’t specified how she’d gotten hurt. 

The paranoid part of him worried that her memories were gone by someone else’s design. He wouldn’t put it past the Handler to surgically remove a few memories and let her heal up in the Commission, where time stood still. She wouldn’t have aged at all while she was there, even if she was there fifteen years. If her memories had been taken away from her by some experimental science, she wouldn’t have realized how long it had been. 

Really, he should be  _ hopeful  _ that she’d only been alone a month. Otherwise, awful things would have happened to her without her knowledge, without  _ anybody _ in their family’s knowledge, either. Being bitter over her finding happiness when she didn’t even know who she was… It was  _ wrong _ of him. 

Not that it changed anything, of course. He couldn’t force down the bitterness, even if he was even trying to do so. How could he not be bitter when she’d found more happiness in a month with some random person than she had in her entire life with their family? Five had liked to think he was an exception, that he had been, to her, one of the small pockets of joy they’d managed to create for themselves. She had been for him, causing him to avoid running away like he’d originally intended, at ten years old. All she’d done was try to tell him some stupid joke while she was stitching up a gash on his thigh, and he’d known that leaving her would have destroyed both of them, ultimately choosing to hold out a little bit longer. 

His dream had always been to time travel and see if it was safe before he came back to her, to take her wherever and whenever she wanted. For them always to take care of one another and have each other’s backs. 

Vanya had tried to convince him to not leave, too. It wasn’t like she’d  _ wanted  _ to go anywhere else, telling him that if he wanted to run away, he didn’t have to test the limits of his powers to do so. She’d had much more sense than him, even then. All of the math and science he was capable of understanding equated to  _ nothing  _ with his distinct lack of common sense, though he’d never admit that aloud to anybody. 

If he’d listened to her at thirteen years old, he wouldn’t be experiencing  _ any  _ of this. Maybe they’d have ran away when they were sixteen, laid low for a few years, adopted new identities and lived a life away from Reginald. If he had done that, they’d both be the same age, finding happiness with one another. He didn’t doubt that they’d be together now; they’d always been close. How she’d once looked at him… It hadn’t been in his head. He knew that. 

But none of that mattered. Because he had left. And she had moved on. And he had come back and left again. 

And sometimes he wished that he hadn’t been given powers, hadn’t grown up the way he did. She’d always wanted to be extraordinary, but he’d always wanted to shake her, tell her that being ordinary kept her  _ safe.  _ When she’d turn those huge, sad eyes on him after a mission, he’d wanted to tell her that he wasn’t sorry that she wasn’t in the line of fire, that not being like him had saved her from an awful fate. Learning that she had had powers… he wondered if she would have ever wished to be ordinary, if given the opportunity. Everything had happened so fast, so he didn’t know if that was truly the case, but he had wished every moment since then that both of them were ordinary. 

To ordinary people, separating from one another wouldn’t have meant the end of the world. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 💕


End file.
